Sixty Years in Southern California, 1853-1913. Harris Newmark
was on such a friendly footing that every death made a very great impression. The native element was always averse to vaccination and other sanitary measures; everybody objected to isolation, and disinfecting was unknown. In more than one familiar case, the surviving members of a stricken family went into the homes of their kinsmen, notwithstanding the danger of contagion. Is it any wonder, therefore, when such ignorance was universal, that the pest spread alarmingly and that the death-rate was high?
The smallpox wagon, dubbed the Black Maria, was a frequent sight on the streets of Los Angeles during these sieges. There was an isolated pesthouse near the Chavez Ravine, but the patients of the better class were always treated at home, where the sanitation was never good; and at best the community was seriously exposed. Consternation seized the public mind, communication with the outside world was disturbed, and these epidemics were the invariable signal for business disorder and crises.
This matter of primitive sanitation reminds me of an experience. To accommodate an old iron bath-tub that I wished to set up in my Main Street home in the late sixties, I was obliged to select one of the bedrooms; since, when my adobe was built, the idea of having a separate bathroom in a house had never occurred to any owner. I connected it with the zanja at the rear of my lot by means of a wooden conduit; which, although it did not join very closely, answered all purposes for the discharge of waste water. One of my children for several years slept in this combination bath- and bedroom; and although the plumbing was as old-fashioned as it well could be, yet during all that time there was no sickness in our family.
It was fortunate indeed that the adobe construction of the fifties rendered houses practically fireproof since, in the absence of a water-system, a bucket-brigade was all there was to fight a fire with, and this rendered but poor service. I remember such a brigade at work, some years after I came, in the vicinity of the Bell Block, when a chain of helpers formed a relay from the nearest zanja to the blazing structure. Buckets were passed briskly along, from person to person, as in the animated scene described by Schiller in the well-known lines of Das Lied von der Glocke:
Durch der Hände lange Kette
Um die Wette
Fliegt der Eimer;[10]
a process which was continued until the fire had exhausted itself. Francis Mellus had a little hand-cart, but for lack of water it was generally useless. Instead of fire-bells announcing to the people that a conflagration was in progress, the discharging of pistols in rapid succession gave the alarm and was the signal for a general fusillade throughout the neighboring streets. Indeed, this method of sounding a fire-alarm was used as late as the eighties. On the breaking out of fires, neighbors and friends rushed to assist the victim in saving what they could of his property.
On account of the inadequate facilities for extinguishing anything like a conflagration, it transpired that insurance companies would not for some time accept risks in Los Angeles. If I am not mistaken, S. Lazard obtained the first protection late in the fifties and paid a premium of four per cent. The policy was issued by the Hamburg-Bremen Company, through Adelsdorfer Brothers of San Francisco, who also imported foreign merchandise; and Lazard, thereafter, as the Los Angeles agent for the Hamburg-Bremen Company, was the first insurance underwriter here of whom I have any knowledge. Adelsdorfer Brothers, it is also interesting to note, imported the first Swedish matches brought into California, perhaps having in mind cause and effect with profit at both ends; they put them on the retail market in Los Angeles at twenty-five cents a package.
This matter of fires calls to mind an interesting feature of the city when I first saw it. When Henry, or Enrique Dalton sailed from England, he shipped a couple of corrugated iron buildings, taking them to South America where he used them for several years. On coming to Los Angeles, he brought the buildings with him, and they were set up at the site of the present corner of Spring and Court streets. In a sense, therefore, these much-transported iron structures (one of which, in 1858, I rented as a storeroom for wool) came to be among the earliest "fire-proof" buildings here.
As early as 1854, the need of better communication between Los Angeles and the outside world was beginning to be felt; and in the summer of that year the Supervisors—D. W. Alexander, S. C. Foster, J. Sepúlveda, C. Aguilar and S. S. Thompson—voted to spend one thousand dollars to open a wagon road over the mountains between the San Fernando Mission and the San Francisco rancho. A rather broad trail already existed there; but such was its grade that many a pioneer, compelled to use a windlass or other contrivance to let down his wagon in safety, will never forget the real perils of the descent. For years it was a familiar experience with stages, on which I sometimes traveled, to attach chains or boards to retard their downward movement; nor were passengers even then without anxiety until the hill- or mountain-side had been passed.
During 1854, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Newmark and family, whom I had met, the year before, for a few hours in San Francisco, arrived here and located in the one-story adobe owned by John Goller and adjoining his blacksmith shop. There were six children—Matilda, Myer J., Sarah, Edward, Caroline and Harriet—all of whom had been born in New York City. With their advent, my personal environment immediately changed: they provided me with a congenial home; and as they at once began to take part in local social activities, I soon became well acquainted. My aunt took charge of my English education, and taught me to spell, read and write in that language; and I have always held her efforts in my behalf in grateful appreciation. As a matter of fact, having so early been thrown into contact with Spanish-speaking neighbors and patrons, I learned Spanish before I acquired English.
The Newmarks had left New York on December 15th, 1852, on the ship Carrington, T. B. French commanding, to make the trip around the Horn, San Francisco being their destination. After a voyage for the most part pleasant, although not altogether free from disagreeable features and marked by much rough weather, they reached the Golden Gate, having been four months and five days on the ocean. One of the enjoyable incidents en route was an old-fashioned celebration in which Neptune took part when they crossed the equator. In a diary of that voyage kept by Myer J. Newmark, mention is made that "our Democratic President, Franklin Pierce, and Vice-President, William R. King, were inaugurated March 4th, 1853;" which reminds me that some forty years later Judge H. A. Pierce, the President's cousin, and his wife who was of literary proclivities, came to be my neighbors in Los Angeles. Mr. and Mrs. Newmark and their family remained in San Francisco until 1854.
Joseph Newmark, formerly Neumark, born June 15th, 1799, was, I assume, the first to adopt the English form of the name. He was genuinely religious and exalted in character. His wife, Rosa, whom he married in New York in 1835, was born in London on March 17th, 1808. He came to America in 1824, spent a few years in New York, and resided for a while in Somerset, Connecticut, where, on January 21st, 1831, he joined the Masonic fraternity. During his first residence in New York, he started the Elm Street Synagogue, one of the earliest in America. In 1840, we find him in St. Louis, a pioneer indeed. Five years later he was in Dubuque, Iowa, then a frontier village. In 1846, he once more pitched his tent in New York; and during this sojourn he organized the Wooster Street Congregation. Immediately after reaching Los Angeles, he brought into existence the Los Angeles Hebrew Benevolent Society, which met for some time at his home on Sunday evenings, and which, I think, was the first charitable institution in this city. Its principal objects were to care for the sick, to pay proper respect, according to Jewish ritual, to the dead, and to look after the Jewish Cemetery which was laid out about that time; so that the Society at once became a real spiritual force and continued so for several years. The first President was Jacob Elias. Although Mr. Newmark had never served as a salaried Rabbi, he had been ordained and was permitted to officiate; and one of the immediate results of his influence was the establishment of worship on Jewish holidays, under the auspices of the Society named. The first service was held in the rear room of an adobe owned by John Temple. Joseph Newmark also inspired the purchase of land for the Jewish Cemetery. After Rabbi Edelman came, my uncle continued on various occasions to assist him. When, in course of time, the population of Los Angeles increased, the responsibilities of the Hebrew Benevolent Society were extended. Although a Jewish organization, and none but Jews could become members of it or receive burial in the Jewish Cemetery, its aim was to give relief, as long as its financial condition would permit, to every worthy person that appeared, whoever